Attacks remembered across nation

NEW YORK (AP) - Americans looked back on 9/11 Tuesday with tears and somber tributes as President Donald Trump hailed “the moment when America fought back” on one of the hijacked planes used as weapons in the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

Victims’ relatives said prayers for their country, pleaded for national unity and pressed officials not to use the 2001 terror attacks as a political tool in a polarized nation.

Seventeen years after losing her husband, Margie Miller came from her suburban home to join thousands of relatives, survivors, rescuers and others on a misty morning at the memorial plaza where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood.

“To me, he is here. This is my holy place,” she said before the hours-long reading of the names of her husband, Joel Miller, and the nearly 3,000 others killed when hijacked jets slammed into the towers, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

At the Pentagon, Vice President Mike Pence recalled the heroism of service members and civilians who repeatedly went back into the Pentagon to rescue survivors.

The terrorists “hoped to break our spirit, and they failed,” he said.

At the United Nations, Security Council members stood for a moment of silence, led by U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley.